Friday, January 30, 2009

Wipro to hire 1,000 freshers

With job losses the order of the day in most firms, Bangalore-based Wipro today claims to be bucking the trend by making around 8,000 campus offers this fiscal year.

And in an email sent to all freshers seeking jobs in areas such as technical support and offshoring, the IT major is inviting applications for 15,000 seats.In the mail, the company’s corporate vice-president for human resources, Pratik Kumar, says that nearly 14,000 offers were made last year, with the students expected to join by the end of this fiscal. He explained that there had been no delay in new recruits joining the company, and that those who received offers this year are expected to join the firm within the next fiscal year.

In its recent quarterly report, Wipro hinted about consolidation among existing staff and a lower rate of hiring. According to the mail, it has already dispatched learning kits containing CDs and content material on the organisation to those who are awaiting their joining date. "We hope that students would go through these and thereby save around two weeks on training when they join us. The normal training duration was 12 weeks,” said Kumar.

The net staff addition for Q3 ended 31 December 2008 was 587, compared with 1,877 in Q2. However, this includes the addition of around 1,600 people through the acquisition of Citi Technology Services.

Wipro has shown concern over the rise in the voluntary attrition rate in the third quarter of this year from 11 per cent in Q2 to 11.9 in Q3. According to Kumar, this number has improved from the 15.8 per cent attrition rate of Q3 of last fiscal, largely because offshore employees had a pay hike of seven to eight per cent in the second quarter of this year.